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It is with immense grief that we would like to inform our compatriots of the passing away of Prince Alireza Pahlavi.

Like millions of young Iranians, he too was deeply disturbed by all the ills fallen upon his beloved homeland, as well as carrying the burden of losing a father and a sister in his young life.

Although he struggled for years to overcome his sorrow, he finally succumbed, and during the night of the 4th of January 2011, in his Boston residence, took his own life, plunging his family and friends into great sorrow.

Once again, we are joined with mothers, father and relatives of so many victims of these dark times for our country.

It is with great sadness to hear of the loss of your beloved son. I can only offer my deepest condolences to you and the entire Pahlavi family for the sudden passing of Prince Alireza Pahlavi. His loss is beyond understanding and my heart is filled with sympathy for your unimaginable loss. I loved and respected him.

Even though this is the final journey that all of us will take, it is hard for those who are left behind. I know that he lives on through all of you, your memories of him and through all those people whose lives he has touched, both directly and indirectly.

As we honor the memory of Prince Alireza Pahlavi, let me wish you peace and strength and God’s blessings.

His Royal Highness Prince Ali Reza Pahlavi of Iran, son of the late Shah of Iran and Her Majesty Farah Pahlavi, passed away in the early hours of January 4th, in Boston. He is survived by his mother, Her Majesty Farah Pahlavi, his older brother Reza, his sister Farahnaz , and his half-sister Shahnaz ...

His Royal Highness Prince Ali Reza Pahlavi of Iran will be cremated and his remains released into the Caspian Sea.

With deepest condolences to the Royal Family of Iran and Free Iran community, the Iranian people have lost a great patriot. Free Iran ActivistChat 7011

His Royal Highness Prince Ali Reza Pahlavi of Iran, son of the late Shah of Iran and Her Majesty Farah Pahlavi, passed away in the early hours of January 4th, in Boston. He is survived by his mother, Her Majesty Farah Pahlavi, his older brother Reza, his sister Farahnaz , and his half-sister Shahnaz ...

His Royal Highness Prince Ali Reza Pahlavi of Iran will be cremated and his remains released into the Caspian Sea.

With deepest condolences to the Royal Family of Iran and Free Iran community, the Iranian people have lost a great patriot. Free Iran ActivistChat 7011

My View:
Despite the fact that the Iranian people have lost a great patriot in very difficult era, His Royal Highness Prince Ali Reza Pahlavi of Iran decision to be cremated and his remains released into the Caspian Sea has a great message to be admired and shared by many Iranians as a clear statement and complete rejection of any form of Islamic establishment in our motherland Iran ….

Sharing My View and Recommendation:If you can, feel free to organize your own public Candle Light Vigil around the world and in every schools, cities, towns and villages in our motherland Iran . "Please pass this on".

In Spirit of Cyrus the Great the greatest leader of all time under Distributed Decentralized Leadership Model (DDLM) the Free Iran community inside and Outside Iran should consider to make their own actions, decision based on their own resources and coditions and don't wait for others or a great leaders to tell you what to do .... Use your team common sense for your team or family actions on major public events...

Ali Reza Pahlavi, the second son and third child of the late Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and Shahbanu Farah (Diba) Pahlavi, committed suicide early Tuesday morning. Pahlavi, age 44, was a resident of Boston's South End neighborhood. According to a Boston Police Department spokeswoman, police officers responded to a call at 2:11 a.m. in the 100 block of West Newton Street, where his three-level row house is located. Pahlavi was found dead of an apparent "self-inflicted gunshot wound."

Pahlavi, born in Tehran, left Iran with his family in 1979 when the Shah was deposed. They were residing in Cairo when his father died in July 1980. In 1982, the 16-year-old Pahlavi moved with his mother and two sisters from Egypt to the United States. He received a B.A. from Princeton University and, in 1992, an M.A. in Middle Eastern languages and cultures from the Columbia University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. According to an online registry of Harvard University alumni, he received a Ph.D. in 2008 from Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where he studied at the Department of Near Eastern Language and Civilizations.

Pahlavi was never married. He is survived by his mother; his brother, Reza; his sister, Farahnaz; and his half-sister, Shahnaz, from his father's first marriage. His younger sister, Leila, died of an apparently self-induced barbiturate overdose in 2001. -- Eds.
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A Ph.D. from Harvard; how exremely sad, such an intelligent, wonderful person to leave us.

Your Majesty,
I do not know how to express my sorrow and condolences to you for passing of prince Alireza. True patriotic Iranians, my family and myself are grieving with you on such loss. Please remember however that you have tens of millions of sons, daughters, brothers and sisters who love you and stand behind you.

To celebrate the life of Prince Alireza Pahlavi of Iran who tragically passed away on January 4th, a silent rally will take place on Friday 7th of January 2011 at 6 p.m at the Trocadero Square (Paris... 16th district).

Princess Room
London Candlelight Vigil in Remembrance of Prince Alireza Pahlavi
Where: Commonwealth Kensington High Street London W8 and next door to Bilvedere Park
When: Friday 7th January 2011 at 6pm to 7:30pm﻿

Dear Shahbanoo, The news of the death of Shahpour Alireza Pahlavi, your beloved son, came as the greatest shock to so many of us.
Overwhelmed with sorrow and with heavy hearts, we would like to extend our deepest condolences to you and your dear family. May God give you patience for losing your son at the prime of his life, may his beautiful soul rest in peace, and may our beloved land be set free from the grips of the fanatics that are bringing it to ruins. You are in our prayers.

when you leave me
in the grave
don't say goodbye
remember a grave is
only a curtain
for the paradise behind

you'll only see me
descending into a grave
now watch me rise
how can there be an end
when the sun sets or
the moon goes down

Why did he do it? Why did a patriotic young man who was a hero and inspiration to Iranians and whose dream like all Iranians was to see a free secular Iran commit suicide? Is it possible that he was forced to take his own life in protest? Is it possible that he was so psychologically tormented by the human rights violations and atrocities he saw in Islamic Republic and the unjust and unfounded accusations and bullying against his father, the King, that he took his own life as other young Iranians in Iran who have been tortured, imprisoned, and blocked from education and work? Prince Ali Reza's suicide note clearly expresses these feelings.

What factors could have contributed to his premature death? Is it possible that his life was prematurely snuffed out by the very forces that are wiping Iran's ancient history off the textbooks? Is Harvard University complicit in this death? Did Harvard grant him a PhD? If not, why not?

Why was his PhD delayed for 20 years? Why was he discouraged from his PhD studies at Harvard? Is it because he was the son of a man who has been falsely vilified for 20 years by Mr. Khomeini and his supporters (liberal left, communists, radical muslims, and mossadegh supporters)? Why was he not allowed to become a professor of Iranian Studies while his fellow colleague at Columbia,Mr. Dabashi, the son of billionaire mullahs, is now full professor and director at Columbia University? Is it because Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford are monopolized by a group of Jewish/Islamic Pseudo Scholars who hand out PhDs and positions to their own?

Mr. Dabashi has the gall to suggest that perhaps Prince Ali Reza Pahlavi committed suicide because "he knew he had no place in Iran." What a bunch of bull crap! This socialist-islamic Khomeini's supporter is a professor who jets around the world to give lectures while our beloved Prince was isolated, cornered, threatened, bullied, harassed, and barred. Every patriotic Iranian has a place in Iran today and in the future. Prince Ali Reza Pahlavi knew he would be a part of the future of Iran. Now he will be a part of our future in spirit.

Is it possible we are witnessing the human costs of the blood drenched brutal, callous, operations and policy of British Empire and its blood sucking vampires, Mr. Khomeini and his successors to maintain British oil interests in middle east?

The Crown Prince, Reza Pahlavi II has dutifully accepted the Boston Police's report and the suicide note that the young Prince left behind. Prince Ali Reza's death is a wake up call to the Iranian community overseas and in Iran to mobilize to save Iran and make it a habitable place for all Iranians.

God Bless and protect the remaining Pahlavi Family and what is left of Iran. We need to unite as Iranians to restore our H.R.H. Reza Pahlavi as King of Iran. His father refused to abdicate. What does this mean? It means Crown Prince Pahlavi is the legitimate ruler of Iran.

Long Live Pahlavi. Long Live a Secular, Democratic Constitutional Monarchy in our beloved Iran.

I suggest you ask your friend to read Karim Sadjadpour's article one more time to better understand it. I love the Shah as much as I love my father. I am a monarchist and I know several other monarchists who correctly understood Mr Sadjadpour's article and appreciated it very much. In fact, Karim Sadjadpour is defending the Pahlavi monarchy against those writers who immediately describe it as "blood-soaked" or those who describe the Shah as "a two-bit dictator". He is not saying those things himself. He is saying that those who write such things do not have a good understanding of history, or of Iran .

Too many of the writers and analysts who write about Iran in English are always attacking the Shah, and they know nothing about this great man's achievements. In fact, Stephen Kinzer, the well-known American journ ali st, wrote a disgusting article about the death of Prince Ali Reza Pahlavi (may he rest in peace), and Kinzer repeated all of the old lies and cliche's about the Shah. Karim was answering Mr. Kinzer and putting him in his place.

I admire you for your loyalty to your country, the late Shah and his family. Believe me I am the same. It is important that we congratulate people like Mr Sadjadpour -- who is not a monarchist -- when they write things that are fair and true about the monarchy. We should not attack them. If we attack them, they will be discouraged and they will not defend the Pahlavi regime again. There is no doubt that Sadjadpour was defending the Pahlavi regime, not attacking it. Maybe the person who wrote the response should take a closer look at the article and maybe someone can translate it into Persian so those people whose English is weak would understand it better.

Also, if you have read any of Mr Sadjadpour's previous articles or seen him on CNN or BBC, you will know that he is one of the harshest critics of the Islamic Republic and one of the biggest defenders of Iran 's freedom from these akhoonds.

I hope you will encourage your friend to read the article again with these ideas in mind.

Iranians, it was once said, are afflicted by a unique strain of melancholy: Those who live in Iran dream of leaving, while those who were exiled dream of going back.

When 44-year-old Alireza Pahlavi, the youngest son of the late Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, took his life on Tuesday, it was undeniably attributable in part to a demor ali zing malady, chronic depression, which he may have inherited from his father. But it was also an undeniable aftershock of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, whose reverberations are still being felt today.

A country like Iran that has repeatedly been subjected to public heartbreak over the last few decades -- most notably the loss of over 200,000 native sons in the ruinous eight-year war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq -- naturally confronts the self-inflicted death of a child of privilege with mixed feelings.

As is often the case, however, Alireza Pahlavi's great privileges were coupled with equally profound misfortune. Until he was 12, he had experienced a fairy-tale childhood as a scion of one of the world's richest and most powerful monarchs. By 13, he had abruptly fled his homeland and experienced the painful and public humiliation of his family's legacy, as well as the death of his father from cancer.

Later, he would lose the person closest to him when his younger sister Leila, age 31, killed herself in a London hotel room in 2001.

For those, like myself, who were born outside Iran or left at a very young age, the term "exiles" was never an appropriate fit. We were second-generation immigrants, and we took it for granted that we would adopt new cultures and languages. We had few if any memories of or claims over what had been lost, only romanticized stories from elders about the verdant Caspian Sea region (shomal), the majestic Alborz Mountains, and the luscious Persian lamb whose fat was miraculously concentrated in the tail -- the original "junk in the trunk."

Alireza Pahlavi's generation of uprooted Iranians -- young adolescents at the time of the revolution -- were often affected more profoundly than those who were too young to remember, or old enough to cope. Three decades later, many still struggle to find their bearings. They negotiate what Brazilians would refer to as saudade, a deep longing for something that is unattainable. Their lack of rootedness has often prevented them from forging stable emotional relationships and fulfilling their professional potential.

I sometimes wondered why Alireza, a serious student who had cut short his Ph.D. studies at Harvard in ancient Iranian studies, remained silent all these years. Although the Pahlavi family's experience as exiles was no doubt softened by significant (though significantly exaggerated) wealth, it was made more difficult by the scorn of many of their exiled compatriots who held them partially if not entirely accountable for their collective plight.

Consumed with his own demons, Alireza perhaps concluded that he had been dealt a hand that he could not win. If he remained on the sidelines he would be excoriated by some for not speaking out. And if he became active and outspoken, others would excoriate him for having Ahmed Chalabi-like aspirations, as they have his older brother Reza.

So he chose to remain in his Boston home, surrounded by his books, with the shades always pulled down.

As a student of history, Alireza was perhaps puzzled by the discipline's relationship to his father. While Hafez al-Assad, the ruthless Syrian dictator who massacred some 20,000 civilians in the city of Hama in 1982, is most commonly remembered as a "shrewd tactician," it has become impossible to maintain intellectual credibility while writing about the Pahlavi era without referring to the Shah as a "blood-soaked," "imperi ali st puppet."

(It is one of the brutal re ali ties of power and statecraft that today Assad's son Bashar, president of Syria, is feted by visiting U.S. politicians and analysts extolli